One method I use to help keep visitors on my site is by creating my hyperlinks so they open a new window when they are clicked.  Patty over at Low-Carb Patty asked how she might create a hyperlink that when clicked, would open a new window, instead of taking the user away from her site. This is easily done by adding a property to the anchor (a) tag.

If you are not familiar with the basic structure of a hyperlink, you might want to read my article on how to create a hyperlink before continuing.  This link will also open in a new window, just to show what I’m talking about.  Isn’t that clever? 

No, not really.

Why Define Hyperlinks to Open a New Window?

“Why would one want to have their links open in a new window?”, you might ask.  The primary reason a blogger would do this is to keep the user on their site.  Just because you provide a link, it doesn’t mean you want the visitor to leave your site, does it?  Maybe, maybe not.  It really depends on what you are trying to achieve.  For instance, when I create hyperlinks in my posts, I consider why I’m providing a link.  Is it supplementary to the content?  Is it simply a reference to deeper information than I intend on providing?  In both of those cases, I might consider having the hyperlink open a new window, so you, the visitor, can get whatever information your linking to, yet still resume where you left off in my post.

The way I see it, if I’m linking to my own content, I won’t open a new window.  However, if I am referring to another blog or web site, I’ll have a new window open to display the web page.  It keeps the user on my blog, because honestly, I don’t want anyone to leave.  I think you probably feel the same way.

Create a Hyperlink That Opens a New Window

The basic structure of a hyperlink looks like this:

<a href="http://www.waynejohn.com">Visit Wayne, He's a Hoot!a>

As you can see, we have all we really need to create a link and make it go somewhere.  But how would we make it open a new window?  Easy.  We need to add one more property to the ‘A’ tag to make it do what we want.  All we need to add is:

target="_blank"

That’s it!  Just like the href property/value pair (href=”some value”), we simply include the target=”_blank” to the ‘A’ tag and we’re done.  Here is what the finished product will look like:

<a href="http://www.waynejohn.com" target="_blank">Goofball Waynea>

Sometimes, editors (not people, the ones we use to write posts with) will provide this functionality as an option for you when you create a hyperlink.  Blogger does not do this, you need to view the HTML source, find the ‘A’ tag you want to modify and then add the target=”_blank” value pair to the hyperlink definition.

Conclusion

I know there are many people out there that find it a bit frustrating when they create a link, only to lose visitors to the link destination, never to see them again.  This is one small step you can take to help create a user experience on your site that you intend.